“It is quite inexplicable to me,” said Helen, slowly, “that you should have any knowledge of my cousin’s letter.  Also, you have obviously been prompt, but I have not the faintest idea why prompt action was necessary.”

“Didn’t your cousin give you my message?”

“Your name was not mentioned in his letter.”

“Did he tell you of Ronnie’s critical condition?”

“He said Ronnie told him he had never felt fitter in his life, and added that he looked it.”

Dick leapt to his feet, walked over to the window, and muffled a few remarks about Aubrey Treherne, in the curtains.  Nevertheless Helen heard them.

“Is—­Ronnie—­ill?” she asked, with trembling lips.

Dick came back.

“Ronnie is desperately ill, Mrs. West.  But, now he is safely at home, within easy reach of the best advice, we will soon have him all right again.  Don’t you worry.”

But “worry” scarcely expressed Helen’s face of agonised dismay.

“Tell me—­all,” she said.

Dick sat down and told her quite clearly and simply the text of his message to her through Aubrey, explaining and amplifying it with full medical details.

“Any violent emotion, either of joy, grief or anger, would probably have disastrous results.  He apparently came to blows with your cousin during the evening he spent at Leipzig.  Ronnie gave him a lovely thing in the way of lips.  One recalls it now with exceeding satisfaction.  When I saw your cousin afterwards he appeared to have condoned it.  But it may account for his subsequent behaviour.  Fortunately this sort of thing—­” Dick glanced about him appreciatively—­“looks peaceful enough.”

Helen sat in stricken silence.

“It augurs well that he was able to stand the pleasure of his home-coming,” continued Dr. Dick.  “He must be extraordinarily better, if you noticed nothing unusual.  Possibly he slept during the night-crossing.  Also, I gave him some stuff to take on the way back, intended to clear his brain and calm him generally.  Did he seem to you quite normal?”

Then Helen rose and stood before him with clasped hands.

“He seemed to me quite normal,” she said, “because I had no idea of anything else.  But now that I know the truth, of course I realise at once that he was not so.  And, oh, Dr. Dick, I had a terrible scene with Ronnie!”

Dick stood up.

“Tell me,” he said.

“I told Ronnie that he was utterly, preposterously, and altogether selfish, and that I was ashamed of him.”

“Whew!  You certainly did not mince matters,” said Dr. Dick.  “What had poor old Ronnie done?”

“He had talked, from the moment of his return, of very little save the ’cello he has brought home.  He had suggested that it might amuse me to put it into a bassinet.  Then when at last tea was over, he proposed, as the most delightful proceeding possible, that we should adjourn to the studio, and that I should sit and listen while he made a first attempt to play his ’cello—­which, by the way, he calls, the ‘Infant of Prague,’ explaining to me that it is the nicest infant that ever was.”